Bitten by Britain 2

Bitten by Britain 2

The Wales Update

Well, Cardiff, as fans will know, is the Doctor Who city, so no surprise that my day tour was a total fangirl trip! Photos later, but in short, I did check out the Millennium Centre and Roald Dahl Plass from “Boom Town” — and subsequently other — Doctor Who episodes, and all Torchwood episodes. The restaurant they stopped at in “Boom Town” was also pretty obvious. Oh, and explored Mermaid Quay and found the tourist office entrance to the Torchwood hub!

There are a lot of other Doctor Who/Torchwood locations in Cardiff, of course, where both series are mainly shot, many times impersonating other places. I thought I’d found one of the buildings Jack Harkness likes to stand on top of (and give us all vertigo!), but I may be wrong. I also found the docks where (I think) the start of the DW episode “Love and Monsters” was shot, impersonating Woolwich! Oh, and of course, there was Cardiff Castle, where John Hart takes Jack just before he destroys the city (“Exit Wounds”).

There was a Doctor Who exhibition near the Millennium Centre, and an overpriced shop. It was interesting. The Dalek was cute — photos and video to follow, hopefully soon.

Altogether a quite fascinating experience, seeing for real locations that have been immortalized on TV. The scale and orientation of what we see on TV is often different from reality. Thus, it was equally fascinating to see how television can glamourize perfectly ordinary things!

8 Comments

Hey Jan. Remember book three? Well I was thinking: preview. And you know what? You don’t need to make a public preview. 🙂 Just a Marie preview. 🙂 And it doesn’t have to even be a major preview 🙂 just a preview about a certain son of a certain someone who is with a certain someone else. 🙂

Swapna

@Marie: Talk to my agent! *giggle* Always wanted to say that, context or not!! About that certain someone… well, he only has like a couple of sentences in the book, but I will be happy to give you a preview when I *sad face* get back.

@Vinod: What do you think? 😉 But no photos… I was a bit too embarrassed for that… especially after taking multiple photos of the “tourists’ entrance” to the Hub! That said, I’m off right now to see the real, working police public call box (modelled on the TARDIS) that they have in Earl’s Court in London. Maybe I’ll snag a fellow tourist and ask them to take a photo of me!

@Swapna: I warn you, I have over a thousand photos… and a Dalek video, and some videos on my phone of Loch Ness… Prepare to be deleted… er, I mean, bored!

*sob* Can I not come back?

Niklas, with his mighty voice

Here is what you have to do to not come back! Put a small knife in your shoe and tie the most horrible impossible to open knot you can manage and pull it really tight. Use those tourists you snag for your photo to help you.

Then when you go to the airport to fly home, they’ll be all, “You gots a knife on you! Arrest this woman!”

And this is where you lie and say, “No I don’t…and I’m in fact a buggling.”

Then you’ll have to spend loads of time arrested, but since your shoe won’t come off, they can’t get the knife and they won’t have real evidence you have a knife. So they will have to release you. But still they can’t let you on a plane without tearing up years of anti-terrorist laws. And it is unlawful to have people living in your country without making them citizens so they’ll have to make you one.

You better make sure they are comfortable shoes first since you’ll wear them for a rather long time.